Back in the early days of what was then referred to as the World Wide Web, a romance reader conference was started called Celebrate Romance (CR). It moved all around the United States, held in a different location each year. I started attending during its second year.
Within a few years, I was part of the leadership of this event, serving as the emcee/Mistress of Ceremonies for several years. Part of that responsibility was to craft an opening speech for the event. Here you’ll find some of those speeches, as well as some parody songs I wrote for various CRs. These songs are fun, lighthearted takes on romance set to tunes most people knew. My apologies to the original lyricists and songwriters!
Keep in mind that these are from the early 2000s. Social media as we know it didn’t exist then. Mobile phones as app-laden, handheld computers didn’t exist then. Blogs were barely getting started back then, much less visually geared apps. Most of us connected through email reflectors, if you can recall that! So these speeches and song parodies reflect that time in romance.
I hope you enjoy them.
MC speeches
- 2001: A Time to Celebrate
- 2004: Perseverance Pays Off
- 2005: In a Romance Desert
- 2006: Transformations and Fairy Tales
Romance song parodies
Romance Ruminations 